Pennsylvania deathmongers INCANTATION have just kicked off a run of European dates with Morgoth, Darkrise, Methedras and Omophagia, which will see the band demolishing venues in Europe, the UK, and Russia this April. In celebration of the band’s 25th anniversary, INCANTATION has just announced a second leg of European dates this coming summer – the death metal veterans will be laying waste to Europe for two weeks this coming July alongside Brazil’s Nervochaos. INCANTATION has also been confirmed for a number of festival appearances this summer, including Obscene Extreme Festival in the Czech Republic, MetalDays Fest in Slovenia, and the third annual Hell’s Headbash in Cleveland, OH. A complete listing of dates is included below.

German death metal band Morgoth, hot on the heels of their God is Evil EP, plan to unleash their first full-length work in 19 years, Ungod. Due to hit the streets on March 30 in Europe and April 7 in North America on Century Media Records, Ungod will contain 11 tracks of death metal in the Morgoth signature style, which blends Florida influences from Death with European melody and the type of flat-out abrasive aggression that bands like Grave and Obscurity demonstrated in their early years.

To preview the new album, Morgoth has released a track “Evil Enemy” streaming below. The band comments on the track: “The idea behind the song ‘Black Enemy’ is that this evil force rests within all of us and all we can do is trying to keep that beast under control. The ‘Black Enemy’ represents the dark and destroying part inside of us and the lyrics deal with someone who is not able to control it anymore, committing a murder in the end.”

About Ungod, the band says: “Our goal was to present some real MORGOTH-style Death Metal, which closes the gap between ‘Cursed’ and ‘Odium.'” They add: “After 18 years we can finally present a first glimpse at our new full-length album, ‘Ungod’! We started with the songwriting in January 2013 and finished the recording process by the end of December 2014. It was an awesome experience to go through the sometimes very complex and challenging process of writing and recording an album again.”

Morgoth defined its path in the 1990s with two EPs that combined the American and European death metal sounds, then deviated into a more contemporary sound with Cursed and ultimately Odium, at which point the band lay low for 18 years before returning with God is Evil, an EP of two songs which combine their early years with their middle-period work on Cursed, although the band consciously strives to make the aesthetic identification with the EPs stronger than anything else. That makes sense, since death metal and death metal nostalgia are both big business, with the younger audience wanting to hear the glory years come roaring to life again and the greybeards wanting to re-live some of their fond memories of what death metal meant back then.

“God is Evil” begins with the type of chord progression and accompanying constant double-bass drums that would have kicked off a classic Florida album, maybe Death Spiritual Healing, but with more of a European melodic flair. The Florida influences remained hidden to me until this release, where suddenly the influences from several big Florida bands including Deicide show in the riff rhythm and tempo changes as well as the choice of chord progression used. Death in particular specialized in these kind of storming extended riffs, but much like Death, Morgoth suffers from making the riffs too “pat” or too handily concluding on a symmetrical counterpart to their initiating phrase. The result makes this easy to nod along to. The song develops with slightly more melody in the guitar and some very Tampa downstroke triplet riffing, then fleshes out its theme expertly. This song strikes me as not only very well-done but as reflecting the kind of forward thought that a band can have when they stop worrying about how clear their influences are, and work instead on putting the song together like they would construct a building, engine or electronic gadget: each piece relating to one another with a function or design idea at the center.

“Die As Deceiver” fares slightly worse. Starting with a riff that might have come from “Pull the Plug” with a few modifications, in the same way ground effects make a Honda Civic a race car, this song launches into a series of chant-heavy choruses that require lots of downstroke barrages to create emphasize, before a melodic vocal leading the chorus in the best Destruction style. Then the song breaks into a classic-era Death style transition with more of a hard rock modality to it, then layers this with increasing drum and bass accompaniment before breaking to the original loop. This song sounds hastier or at least more hesitant in that the band clearly builds itself around a couple of tropes but is unclear how they relate outside of rhythm, which creates the impression of a play with the scenes shown in the wrong order. The use of heavy expectation in riff delivery here creates more of a pop influence on this song and makes it less likely to sustain repeated listens. The strained vocals of Mark Grewe attempt to emulate the The Haunted or later At the Gates style and do nothing for the music, because like all “modern metal” (read: lapsed metal) that style leads with vocals and relegates guitar to a sidekick role, at which point it quick becomes more like mainstream rock, which seems to have been the goal. More like the average, more audience. Morgoth shows they do not need to stay current or worry about their influences from the first song but almost seem to have lost confidence on the second and fallen back on crowd-pleaser technique which promptly swallowed up their quality songwriting.

On the whole, God is Evil shows a revitalized Morgoth making a credible attempt at restoring the power of its early years while incorporating some of the musical lessons learned with its more populist albums. My advice to this band is to trust your gut, not your spreadsheets, and focus on writing the music that comes most naturally. Cursed and Odium were the same mistake in opposite directions: trying to be current with the most underground stuff possible, and trying to catch up with the mainstream stuff (which was actually a regression from what death metal had done). These are clearly talented players who, when they let themselves, make amazing death metal that infuses European melody into the charging Florida style.

German death metal band Morgoth releases its first new studio material since 1996 with God is Evil, a 7″ and digital single with two new tracks. The band also released a teaser of the new material which samples but does not include in full the first track, “God is Evil.”

The material shows the same classic death metal riffing as the original Morgoth releases that inspired their prominence in the early 1990s underground with Cursed and Grim Reality, but adds standoffish speed metal riffs and modern metal influences on the vocals. As a result, more groove and bounce enter the fray but are done in such a way as to maximize impact and deaden any similarities to life-loving positive music.

As the teaser runs only 1:38 further conclusions are difficult at this time but many of us are watching to see how this band develops for its return at a time when many classic death metal bands are seeing widespread notice for the first time. The single dropped on August 11 in Europe and will see US release over the new few days via Century Media.